Outbound call centers may originate telephone calls to targeted parties for various purposes. The calls may be made in conjunction with surveying individuals for a political campaign, notifying customers of suspicious charges on their credit card accounts, inquiring about repayment of past due loan amounts, soliciting donations for a non-profit organization, or offering new products for sale. In many instances, the call center may originate calls to individuals (“targeted parties”) located in a variety of geographical areas. Frequently, the targeted party may be in another state than the state in which the call center is located. Thus, calls may originate in a call center that is hundreds, or even thousands of miles away from the contacted party. Consequently, the call center often is in a different time zone than that of the targeted party.
Various regulations may limit the times when certain types of calls may be attempted to the targeted party. For example, certain federal regulations may limit the origination of telemarketing calls between 8:00 a. m. and 9:00 p.m. The time period in which calls are allowed is sometimes called the “calling window.” Some call center operators may define and use a more restrictive calling window, such as between 9:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. Further, some states may have more restrictive calling windows, including on certain days.
The calling window is defined with respect to the targeted party, not with respect to the call center. In other words, the call window times are defined as local to the targeted party. Thus, reference herein to “local time” means the local time of the targeted party. If both the call center and the targeted part are located in the eastern time zone, then the call center can originate a call to this targeted party at 8:30 a.m. However, the call center may not originate a call to a targeted party located in the pacific time zone, where the local time would be 3 hours earlier, e.g., 5:30 a.m. Therefore, the call center must know the local time of the targeted party in order to comply with the appropriate regulations defining the calling window. In order to determine this, the local time zone of the targeted party must be determined
Determining the local time zone of the targeted party can be determined once the location of the targeted party is known, but determining the location of the targeted party may not always be a simple process. In some cases, the time zone of the targeted party can be determined by analyzing the targeted telephone number, but certain conditions may cause uncertainty. Further, other conditions may also impact how the targeted party's time zone is determined. Thus, flexible and effective systems and methods are required to ascertain the time zone of the targeted party.